


our touch is just a touch

by saltandsunscreen



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Villaneve, ten months is too long to wait for season 3 so im going to write my own version to tide me over, youre welcome to join me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 19:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18999484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandsunscreen/pseuds/saltandsunscreen
Summary: Villanelle doesn’t care, not about Eve, not about any of it. At all.Eve has her own problems -- it’s too late to walk away from any of this, and that’s only mostly because she doesn’t want to.Niko might be neatly out of the picture, but Raymond’s death has stayed messy, and Carolyn isn’t going to clean it up, not unless Eve and Villanelle do something for her first. Quite a lot of somethings, actually.One of these days, they’re going to figure out how to hate each other properly. They've got to. Right? But for now, they’re stuck back on the same path. And maybe that’s its own kind of Alaska.(an attempt at Killing Eve season 3)





	1. 45 seconds later - Villanelle

**Author's Note:**

> this is my version of season three, so obviously it'll be a bit of a slower burn. buckle up guys this is going to have Dramatic Villaneve and a Plot. not a prolific fanfic writer so pls don't roast me alive
> 
> @villanevest on tumblr
> 
> title is from Sigrid's song Strangers

It takes less time to get back to the thick of the city than Villanelle would’ve thought. Walking with Eve through the tunnels had seemed heady and languorous at once -- one long adrenaline rush that threw the gravity off, so they went against the grain instead of with it. But of course it would be like this now, after everything. It’s always faster moving away from something than towards it.

She takes a deep, even breath. When she was small, a teacher had told her she should try and count up to ten and back down again, slowly, if something ever made her angry. It would calm her down, he promised. But that teacher was stupid, and the next time Andrei had taken her pencil, she’d taken it back, and pressed it into his thigh so hard he bled and cried. And _that_ had calmed her down.

But this isn’t school, and there’s no Andrei, no pencils or annoying teachers; this is bigger and wider than that, this is Eve, _Eve_ , and deep breaths will do less than nothing -- Villanelle is --

She turns exactly so her back is to the ruins, and they’re not even in her periphery. It’s over, it’s done, and she doesn’t care. She can feel how much she doesn’t care pressing against her ribs, but soon it will be quieter.

Villanelle is very, very good at making things quiet.

She rounds another corner and this street is one she recognises, yes, she knows where she is. There’s a small crowd by the storefronts, mostly Americans in lanyards waving iPhones. A woman flags Villanelle down -- young, blonde, straight-haired, no curls, _not_ like --

“Could you take a picture of me and my boyfriend?” she asks, and Villanelle waits for the usual dizzy rush, the one that comes from being so, _so_ underestimated, from playing bit parts in the lives of other people who will never really know they almost died, almost got broken down to their pieces just to give her something to do.

Villanelle considers: _OMG, totally, babe! He’s_ so _fit, you’re a lucky girl!_ , and then maybe dropping the phone, grinding her heel into it for good measure. But valleygirl-on-holiday doesn’t go with her outfit, regal and refined and wine-coloured, so instead she says, “I’m sorry, I’m late to a lunch. I’m sure someone else around here could help you.” Then she pulls a tight smile, and continues on her way.

She could’ve wrecked their day, and with so little effort. Villanelle likes tourists, though. They’re bright and gaudy, and she can trace the grating of their accents and bubblegum-snaps in the thin expressions of the locals.

Villanelle has never really been a tourist anywhere. It’s something she’s good at, exceptional at: shrugging into a borrowed normality, blending into a place she’s never been to as if it was where she learned to ride a bike and had her first kiss and all the et cetera of growing up ordinary that she’s patched together from a blur of Netflix. But Villanelle thinks she would quite like to go somewhere, for once, and not fit. To be brash and loud and unapologetically of the elsewhere. Perhaps in Alaska, she and Eve might’ve --

There is a gelato place somewhere around here that Konstantin dearly loves, and she is going to go and order his very favourite in horrifying quantities now that he is not here to enjoy it.

Spite often tastes like strawberry-mango twist, in Villanelle’s experience.

It’s another few winding blocks, a sagging mix of modern and ancient slapped together, neon signs on buildings older than some languages. Villanelle has only been to Rome a handful of times, and she won’t come back. Because of the buildings, obviously. They’re tacky. They should stop trying to lacquer over something broken, should just let it all fall apart, and then maybe, maybe, the ruins would _know_ they were ruins, and they wouldn’t believe they could be new again, or that they could fit somewhere that didn’t really want them to be what they were, and --

Anyway. She prefers Paris.

The gelato parlour is out of the way, hidden in a tiny alley that wouldn’t seem like it led anywhere unless you already knew it did. And she does know, because Konstantin brought her here when they were _friends_ , when she was twenty-two and he told her chocolate is an ice-cream flavour, not a gelato flavour, so even though she’d wanted peach she’d asked for ganache just to watch his eye twitch.

She pushes the door open with far more force than necessarily, but not enough to shatter the window. The clerk winces even so, and there’s the immediate temptation to send her fist through the glass, to give him something to _really_ wince about.

She walks right up to the counter, and the man already waiting shifts out of her way on instinct. At the last second, he tries to pretend it’s a kindness, gesturing a _no, you, of course_ , as if it were manners and not intuitive fear that made him move.

The clerk clears his throat. “What can I get you?” he asks in lilting English, and she takes a beat to be offended that he’s assumed she can’t speak Italian.

“Come? Cos’ha detto?” she asks, pairing it with her most innocent expression, and he scrabbles to switch languages again.

She stares down at the display case, at the brightness of the swirling creams against the marble-finish tubs.

The clerk clears his throat. “Ti consiglio di --”

“Le fragole e mango, per favore,” she drawls sweetly, batting her eyelashes a little, and there it goes, the blush in his cheeks, and why does Eve have to be so complicated when other people are so _easy_ \--

He grins. “Certo.”

Behind him, the wall is covered in stickers, so many layers that they form a seamless mass, shiny and intricate. They’re mostly franchise logos and band labels but there’s one that’s a tattered rainbow, several years old and nearly bleached entirely away, and underneath it says, _Love Wins!_

Villanelle takes a second to imagine it: Love, a greased-up fighter on one of those god-awful cable shows, swinging calloused fists, spitting and shoving sweat out of its eyes.

She scoffs. Useless. One nick to the femoral artery and Love would go down, bleed out, and _Villanelle_ would win. Maybe she should get that on a sticker.

“Signorina?”

 _Villanelle Wins!_ , pasted on the walls of a new apartment, in a new country. And she is winning, she’s always winning, because she has the best of everything. The nicest clothes and the sharpest knives and the most beautiful face. So what if she doesn’t have Eve? Eve might’ve turned away from her, but Eve is also lying in agony in the dirt right now. Villanelle is clearly still the victor in that equation.

“Signorina? Questo gelato costa dieci euros.”

Why is she getting gelato? She should be having champagne. The most expensive champagne in Rome. She should flatter some trust-fund boy into buying it for her, and then she should drink it in the largest hotel suite that she can get on short notice, and that will prove exactly how much she is glad of all this, to have come out on top.

“Scusa --”

Villanelle turns and leaves the shop, each step faster than the one before. Because why bother gloating to an obnoxious rich college senior she’ll probably kill anyway, what’s the point of bragging if she can’t do it by teasing Eve and prodding and prying until Eve snaps back? Until Eve tries to beat her in turn, and fails or succeeds -- either or, it doesn’t matter, because it’s the Eve of it all that makes it winning.

She was right. About time going faster. It feels like it only takes a minute to get to the ruins again, to retrace her path until she’s standing by a towering column, at the edge of a stain of coppered blood mixed with sandstone dust.

Until she’s rigid and blank, inches from the empty space where Eve should be.


	2. 9 minutes later - Eve

There’s something white and glowing above her, and god, if Eve dies, she is going to be so fucking _ pissed _ at Villanelle. She’s totally going to haunt her. She’s going to follow her around and knock all her priceless classy shit over and --

No. Villanelle would probably get a kick out of that, out of the fact that Ghost Eve could go anywhere in the world, but instead, she’d chosen to hang out with the annoying, narcissistic assassin who’d killed her. She’d lilt in a dozen languages about her having a  _ crush _ , how  _ cute _ . Eve refuses to give her the satisfaction.

“Eve,” Kenny says, voice both close and far away, and Eve realises that it’s all moot, because she’s  _ not _ dead.

Just in horrific pain. 

“Ow,” she hisses, and she thinks she tries to grab at the wound in her side, but hands are holding her wrists, restricting her movements. She blinks -- once, twice, three times -- and the white and glowing thing becomes the sun shining through the window. Of a car. She’s in the back of a car, with a former co-worker leaning over her, frowning. Awesome. 

“Eve, can you hear me?”

She grunts. It’s clearly enough for Kenny, because he grins, relieved. He looks so young, so pale, like a little kid who’s just been told his dog  _ did  _ come home after all, and --

Wait. She’s mad at him too, isn’t she? Fuck, is there no one in Eve’s life who isn’t a colossal asshole? Who hasn’t betrayed her at least one?

Well, there’s Niko. But she’s rather be hair-tearing furious than numb.

“Kenny! Clean-up duty? How could you --” 

“I tried to warn you,” he defends. “I told you not to come here.”

“But then someone else would’ve --”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t have been you.” 

That’s a sweet thought. She’s been kind of a dick to Kenny, hasn’t she? Although she supposes they’re probably even now, given that he may or may not have been involved in tying up the loose ends like her and Villanelle and Hugo.

She’s about to say something stupid, something childish and plaintive like _call it a_ _tie?_ when the car goes over a bump and it feels like she’s being stabbed in the side.

Shot. Shot in the side. Does that feel the same as being stabbed? Maybe when she sees Villanelle again, she can shoot her, and ask her the difference. Serve her right.

_ If  _ she sees Villanelle again. 

Eve shakes the thought off, because everything hurts enough as it is. 

“We’re getting you to a hospital,” Kenny tells her, and he’s still fading in and out. “So just hang on, okay? Please?”

“Please? You think if you ask fucking politely my bullet wound will just --”

“You’re not very nice when you’ve been shot.” There’s something blank and wry to Kenny’s expression that flickers all Carolyn for just a second.

“Not nice?” Eve laughs, one fast breath, and it’s more of a sob. But laughing means she’s alright, and sobbing means -- 

She’s laughing.

“We’re two minutes out.”

“How --” She bites her lip, hard, and jeez, she has never been this aware of her body in the whole of her life, except for maybe when Villanelle was pressed up against her. But then she’s felt like the spaces in her were filled with heat, but now it’s just pain, pain curled up with the marrow in her bones, plastered to her sinew, taut in her muscles. She is  _ all _ pain. “How did you find me?”

“Mum made me put a tracker in your shoe. Just in case.”

“That’s an -- ah, fuck -- an invasion of privacy.” And a cliche. 

“What do you think we do, Eve?” He pauses. “Eve?”

But she is feeling all kinds of faraway, so she just closes her eyes, and everything goes wonderful and  _ smooth _ . 

 

* * *

 

Eve wakes up in layers. The first soft darkness that breaks leaves everything still dense with sleep; the second, and things start to come back, in fractures and threads; the third, and it’s not a dream. Villanelle really shot her.

Villanelle really wanted to run away to Alaska with her.

“Oh, good. You’re not dead.”

Eve turns her head. Her brain feels mealy and slow, but then, then, the blurs in her sightline become a face, and the face becomes Hugo’s. 

He looks worse for wear. But Eve imagines she does, too. She’s kind of glad she can’t see her own reflection right now. 

She glances around. It’s a small ward room -- the lack of windows makes her unsure if this is even a real hospital, although the drips and monitors are all accounted for -- and they’re the only two people in here. “Did they tell you that I was?”

Hugo shrugs, expression tightening as he does so, like he already regrets moving at all. “No. But you ran off into a building with a hitman, and you didn’t come back. And when I woke up the first time, you weren’t here.”

Right, she’d probably been killing Raymond right about then. Watching the axe go so  _ easily  _ through the skin and bloody ropes that make a human neck, in that suddenly wide space between the jawline and the collarbone. Watching Villanelle’s eyes go brassy with something open and free and warm. 

_ Wet _ , she’d said. And it had been wet. But of all the details that are never leaving her mind, that seems like such an odd one to pick out now. Perhaps the least difficult, though. And Eve could use a little less difficulty for a while.

“Eve?” 

Her body is slow and heavy. Too complex for her to possibly do anything but luxuriate in, experience second-hand. “Hmm?”

“Morphine. It’s the good stuff, right?” He chuckles, grainy. “If I’d known all it took to get the top-shelf drugs was getting  _ shot _ , I’d have --”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“For leaving you. Alone.” She swallows. “I went to call the ambulance.”

“Oh.” And he smiles at her, but it’s all reserved, no more recklessness. 

He doesn’t really trust her anymore, she realises abruptly. Which means he must’ve, once. 

Did she ever trust him? Did she ever pause and consider him long enough to bother making up her mind? Hugo has always been defined in negatives: not-Kenny, not-Niko, not-Villanelle. 

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” she adds. “With the drugs.”

“So did they get you? The goons?”

Eve shoves another sob-laugh out of her chest. “Goons?” But she’s treading water, because, because what does she say?  _ I went to find Villanelle instead of staying with you. I had to pick between you and I chose the chance she was in trouble over the fact that you were. And then she shot me. _

No matter how she dresses that up, Hugo’s never going to understand. Worse, he’s going to say, “I told you so”, and he’ll be right. Eve got too close, and Villanelle did exactly what everyone reminded her a thousand times she would do.

And somehow it  _ had  _ felt inevitable, but everyone had also been wrong. Somehow. Wrong about the whys and hows, at least, even if their warnings held weight in the end. 

She clears her throat. “Yes. A goon got me.”

Hugo nods. “Tough break.”

There’s a pause. Eve lets herself relax again. The machine by her bed makes a beeping sound that should be annoying, but instead it’s kind of lulling.  _ You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re -- _

“What d’you suppose they’re going to do with us now?” Hugo asks. “They can’t have ordered the hits on us, right?” 

“That’s naive.”

“No, I mean, why would they have saved us if they tried to kill us in the first place?”

“Oh.” Maybe it’s the morphine, but Eve’s having a hard time making herself care either way. She’s so fucking exhausted, all of a sudden. By everything that’s gone so badly. By everything she wouldn’t change. By how much those two overlap. “Who knows what they’ll do with us?”

Through the haze, Eve remembers, again, that the last time she saw Carolyn Martens, it was the back of her head, as she walked out of a mediocre hotel room, after telling Eve that she’d done exactly what everyone had thought she’d do.

Eve wonders what it says about her that she’s more upset about being so predictable she can be used than she is about actually being used. Not that she’s not upset about both. She is. She’s fucking furious at Carolyn. At Kenny. At MI6. Konstantin. Villanelle. Hell, she could scroll through pretty much her entire phone contacts app and  _ not  _ find someone she isn’t furious with. 

Well, maybe the Indian place that delivers pretty promptly. They’ve done nothing to deserve being yelled at.

Regardless, she should probably write a list out. Number them. Just to keep it all straight in her head. 

“Eve?”

“Yeah?”

“If -- if it turns out everything does go okay, will you keep working at MI6?”

Eve groans. “Go back to sleep, Hugo. Make career decisions when you don’t have a gaping hole in your side.” They were probably stitched up while they were unconscious, but still. Her point stands. 

“Right. But --”

“Go. To. Sleep.”

The answer is that even if Carolyn did let her leave, Eve is too fucked up now to go anywhere else. That Eve is too fucked up now to even  _ want  _ to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am aware this is Not Very Good but i am neck-deep in assessment right now and spend all day writing, so i end up just wanting to have fun and do one draft of something lmao. don't worry i'll write better soon

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if the italian was shitty i did my best. im australian and i only speak english and french and a (VERY) limited amount of spanish.
> 
> comment or come chat to me on tumblr :D


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